Guest post by Ruth Bremer
Guest blogging can be a creative marketing tool for building your online presence and directing traffic to your website. But you only have so many hours in the day, and you need to use your time and creativity in the most effective way possible. So how much 
should you focus on guest blogging as opposed to writing for your own site?
There’s no question that when properly executed, guest blogging offers some serious benefits. As Miguel Salcido explains in this article, contributing guest posts can help increase your visibility and establish you as an authority in your area of expertise. And guest blogging on high-quality sites will spread your links across a wide variety of domains, which indicates to both search engines and real humans that you’re a credible, relevant source with valuable information to share.
Perhaps the most obvious benefit to guest blogging is that you can include some backlinks to your own site. But this is where we need to pause for a moment and consider what exactly these backlinks are linking back to.
Let’s say you meet someone at a party, and the two of you hit it off, talking for hours about your shared interest in jazz music. When you mention that you’d love to see his record collection, your new friend invites you over to his place. But as soon as you walk in the door, rather than 
continuing your conversation or offering to show you his favorite albums, he hands you a brochure and starts trying to sell you a life insurance policy.
You might have had a similar experience after reading a guest blog post and clicking on the author’s link. Instead of discovering a blog filled with relevant material, you landed on a website trying to sell you something–perhaps even a product or service that was completely unrelated to the article you just enjoyed. You likely reacted much like you would with that insurance salesman. You’re out the door, the relationship over before it had a chance to begin.
If you’re going to make the effort to post on other sites and invite people to yours, you’d better get the place ready for guests. As Carson Ward emphasizes in this SEOmoz post, your potential customers will feel comfortable and have a good experience if your site is well-designed, easy to navigate and interesting. These are visitors who liked your guest post, and now they want to hear more from you. That doesn’t mean they’re ready to buy what you’re selling. So don’t hand them the brochure right away. Give the relationship a little time to develop, and provide them with some valuable information and ideas.
Of course, the only way to accomplish this is to have plenty of great content on your site. In The Ultimate Guest Blogger’s Guide for 2013, Mike Sobol reminds us that effective internet marketing–and SEO–is all about adding value for users. While you can certainly share the occasional piece of news about your company, for the most part your blog should be devoted to providing informative, helpful content designed to interest and engage your target audience.
As Ward points out, filling your proprietary blog with interesting, up-to-date content also helps you in a couple of additional ways. Other bloggers will be more likely to accept guest posts from you if your target site has credible content. And if readers of the host blog view your blog as a valuable resource, they’re more likely to share your content with others.
The bottom line: guest blogging can be a powerful tool, but you really need to start with your own blog and create something awesome for all those backlinks to link back to. Whether you are writing for your site or for someone else’s, the most important thing is to create high-quality content that people actually want to read.
How do you craft the perfect email? Follow the tips in Infusionsoft’s “Anatomy of an Email” to get the best message out to your target audience.
This post was written by Ruth Bremer, a freelance writer for BlogMutt, which is a service that writes posts for business blogs. Check out BlogMutt’s twitter stream, or visit Scott Yates, the CEO of BlogMutt, on Google+.
This post Guest Blogging Vs. Blogging — What’s most important? was first published on the Big Ideas Blog.